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Most years, the winner of the Ballon d’Or wins by a very comfortable margin. But sometimes the results after the votes have been counted can be pretty close. On such occasions, you can only feel sorry for the runner-up.Here is a look at five years when the Ballon d’Or winner was decided by a small margin of victory.Note: Before the Ballon d’Or became the FIFA Ballon d’Or, the polls were based on points. The voters picked five choices where the first got 5 points, the second got 4 points, third 3 points, fourth 2 points and the fifth choice got 1 point. Later, instead of points, a percentage system was used.
#1 2000: Zinedine Zidane loses to Luis Figo
The competition for the award in 2000 was between two friends who are also among the greatest in the history of the game. During this period, Figo made his controversial switch from Barcelona to Real Madrid and Zidane was still a Juventus player.
Figo won the award with 197 points narrowly beating Zidane who had 181 points. Upon receiving the award, Figo became the second Portuguese player to win it after Eusebio (1965) and the third Real Madrid player to win it – the first for a Los Blancos player since 1959.
Figo and Zidane later became teammates at Real Madrid and were part of their famous Galacticos team of the early 2000s. Although Zidane didn’t win the award in 2000, he had previously won it in 1998.
#2 1996: Ronaldo loses to Matthias Sammer
The result of the 1996 Ballon d’Or award was one of the closest ones in the history of the award. Sammer was a Borussia Dortmund legend and won the UEFA Champions League with Dortmund in 1996 as well as Euro 1996 with Germany. And his competition that year was none other than Brazilian legend Ronaldo.
Ronaldo didn’t win any major trophy in 1996 and that could be one the reasons why he didn’t win the award that year. Sammer won the award with 144 points, just edging out Ronaldo who amassed 141 points. The German midfielder did deserve the award and Ronaldo got the one he deserved the very next year. He would win it a second time in 2002 as well.
After his retirement, Sammer served as Borussia Dortmund’s manager for a while and, interestingly, he also worked as the sporting director at FC Bayern Munich! Maybe that explains the huge affinity Bayern have shown for Dortmund players in the past.
#3 1992: Hristo Stoichkov loses to Marco van Basten
Marco van Basten is one of the many great Dutch players to have come through the ranks of Ajax. His legacy is not just limited to Ajax though; the Dutchman spent eight years with AC Milan and won several honours (team and individual) with the Italian side.
Van Basten received his first Ballon d’Or award in 1988 and then won the award again in 1989. On both occasions, the Dutchman won the award comfortably. In 1992, Van Basten was once again on the shortlist for the award and his biggest competitor was Barcelona’s Hristo Stoichkov, who is considered as the greatest Bulgarian footballer ever.
Stoichkov and Van Basten were both on the shortlist for the award in 1991, but both of them finished in the lower end of the list with Stoichkov finishing above Van Basten. But that wasn’t the case in 1992.
Stoichkov finished second with 80 points and Van Basten won the award with 98 points. Although that may seem like a big difference, it wasn’t so because the difference between the winner and the runner-up are much bigger on most occasions.
Although the big Bulgarian didn’t win in 1992, he won the award two years later in 1994.
#4 2002: Roberto Carlos loses to Ronaldo
This was yet another competition between two friends and teammates. Ronaldo and Carlos were not just teammates at Brazil, because at the time of receiving the award, they were also teammates at Real Madrid.
The duo had won the World Cup with Brazil in 2002, but Carlos had more trophies to show for the year than Ronaldo as the striker had joined Real Madrid just before the 2002/03 season got underway. Nevertheless, Ronaldo won in 2002 with 169 points (later recalculated to 171) ahead of Roberto Carlos who had 145 points.
If Carlos had won the award, then it would have been a rare victory for a defender.
#5 2013: Lionel Messi loses to Cristiano Ronaldo
The result of the poll in 2013 was quite surprising. The final three for the award were Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi and Franck Ribery.
Ribery had won the treble with Bayern Munich that season and was also named the Best Player in Europe in 2013. However, in spite of the numerous trophies won, the Frenchman finished third in the poll with 23.36% of the votes.
Lionel Messi finished second with 24.72% of the votes behind Ronaldo who had 27.99% of the votes. On the four occasions when Messi won the award, his margin of victory was quite large, except in 2010 but even then it was not as close as it was in 2013.
